December Day #16

Ahhh...much better day staying home today!

Today we did 2 Follow The Star devotionals to catch up.

Firstly our angels were sitting atop the bread maker holding a picture of a bakery.
Did you know BETHLEHEM means "house of bread"?  Ok you say... 
Well did you know that Jesus referred to himself as "the bread of life" in John 6:48.  
Micah 5:2 says "Bethlehem...out of you shall come forth the One to be ruler in Israel".  
I really like that God considers even the smallest details... Bethlehem (bakery) out of you will come Jesus (bread of life).  
And to further the analogy, bread fills us when we are hungry.  Jesus will fill us in that empty, lonely, hurting place in our spirit.  

The second place our angels were today is sitting on my hat stand (no hats; just scarves, and wedding things).  They are holding a key with the word PEACE on it.
Peace.  Often you will read the word peace on Christmas cards with pictures of doves.  But why is Christmas the season of peace?  
When the angels announced Jesus birth they sang "Peace on Earth" because Jesus is called the Prince of Peace.  Peace had come to earth in the form of Jesus.  Many at the time were hoping that peace would entail the over throw of the Roman rule in their land, but it was a different kind of peace that Jesus offered.  The peace you can have when things are not going so well as you might like but you know that all is ok because the Creator is in control. 
Peace is the key.  

Today Arrow and Cedar opened a book each.

The books are:

• The Gifts of Christmas.  This is a Precious Moments book.  I love PM.
• A Child Was Born.  A sweet rhyming version of Jesus birth.

Crafts today!  

We made suns to go with the stars.  
Suns, because when Zechariah was able to speak again after the birth of his son John he spoke a prophesy in which he said "...because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace." Luke 1:78-79
He spoke of Jesus as the sunrise shining light into our dark sinful state and guiding us in the way of peace.
Isn't that beautiful!  That's what we will think about when we look at our suns on the window!

With the sun shining through the cellophane we get coloured shadows on our table and floor...pretty!

Next craft was relating to the names of Jesus.  Letters cut out of magazines and glued to a Popsicle stick with a ribbon to hang.  There are many names that describe Him and help us to understand more about God.  These 5 crafts have names chosen by the children from our devotionals.

"Jesus" "Son of God" "Bread of Life" "Emmanuel" "King"

I don't very often give any of my children colouring in pages (that can be another blog post one day) but occasionally they are useful for time fillers between crafts.  

Here is how I kept Arrow and Cedar happy for hours today.  Truly hours!
Glittery homemade playdough.  They loved it.

This is Crystal's picture - grass, stars, clouds, wind.  I love it.  So creative.

Arrow holding Olaf on a glittery mound of snow!

Olaf is digging in the snow to find a star!

Cedar loading the dump truck with playdough.

Now it is a racing strip for motorbikes!

Lots of vehicles and the occasional animal.

Now for the food part.  Candy melts.  Put hard boiled lollies into cookie cutters and into the oven at 180 degrees for about 10 minutes. 

Before 

After

They melt and spread.  Fun to try.

I tried out Christmas Tree bread and Star bread.  They turned out great!  And delicious!

Before cooking

After cooking

Before cooking

After cooking

We will definitely do these again!  

And after a busy day someone has to clean up!

If it has a button and makes a noise, trust a boy to be the first one to volunteer!

And so the other gadget crazy boy doesn't feel like he is missing out I blew up a balloon and he watched it hover over the vacuum air outlet! 

~Lorna